• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

What browser do you use.

Gilmour

Member
May 13, 2011
53
9
Hi, what browser do you use.
Share your thoughts, advantages and disadvantages.

I said goodbye to chrome after trying Brave last year. At that time I had iOS. But when I switched to Android.. I was shocked at the amount of ads Android version of Chrome is displaying comparing to iOS version. But luckily Brave is also available for Android and with much more advanced shield options. Sure, Brave isn't perfect but it is my default browser.( I believe ad blocking on Android Brave is based on ublock filters but it can't be modified, customized or be updated. No add-ons sadly.

I did try Samsung browser but it didn't impress me even with ads blocking and add-ons.

Tried Vivaldi don't remember anything bad or good about it. So so ad blocking.

Opera looks and feels busy and not that good at blocking ads.

Firefox is probably becoming my go to browser. I like that devs are updating it pretty often and the best feature is of course add-ons.. Ublock is just too good not to be used. And recently I added Dark Reader which is just an amazing add-ons.. The only thing I don't like about Firefox is UI and overall feel. But I think I just got used to Chromium and that's why FF feels a bit odd.

Let me know what do you prefer.
 
Last edited:
Firefox. The UI is practical for a mobile device, and it is my main desktop browser (so if I really need to I can set it up to access my desktop bookmarks, though I generally use mobile and laptop browsers differently). But I do have at least half a dozen browsers on my phone, and have been known to use different browsers for different groups of sites just to break up my internet history.

I don't use Chrome though: I've always assumed its main reason for existing is to give Google your entire browsing history, which has seemed to me a sufficient reason not to use it. But when I tested it on Android (a few years back) I couldn't find anything special about it in either features or performance, which made the decision to not use it on Android much easier.

The biggest problem I have with Lightning is that it's not been updated since 2019. Not an issue now, but sooner or later an app that's not maintained will become a problem (though I have apps, including at least one other browser, which have not been updated for a lot longer than that! But nothing that I rely on as my main app).
 
Upvote 0
Firefox. The UI is practical for a mobile device, and it is my main desktop browser (so if I really need to I can set it up to access my desktop bookmarks, though I generally use mobile and laptop browsers differently). But I do have at least half a dozen browsers on my phone, and have been known to use different browsers for different groups of sites just to break up my internet history.

I don't use Chrome though: I've always assumed its main reason for existing is to give Google your entire browsing history, which has seemed to me a sufficient reason not to use it. But when I tested it on Android (a few years back) I couldn't find anything special about it in either features or performance, which made the decision to not use it on Android much easier.

The biggest problem I have with Lightning is that it's not been updated since 2019. Not an issue now, but sooner or later an app that's not maintained will become a problem (though I have apps, including at least one other browser, which have not been updated for a lot longer than that! But nothing that I rely on as my main app).
On topic with chrome, you can always head to my activity and shut off the web browsing, with tracking cookies, and youtube et all, many people do not head over to that site that often, but you can shut it all off and no matter how many times you clear out browsing history it will stay safe and sound for other kids, firefox is the same way you can have a billion add ons, but once you figure out how to do about:config and wash that away then yeah, everything will be better off,I do have FF focus on my droid, as well as edge, but I do not often play with edge as much, I mostly use DuckDuckGo add on to my skeleton Chrome on my desktop.
 
Upvote 0
I have every type of Google history tracking turned off in my Google settings anyway (including the backdoors, such as the way "app and web history" lets them keep a pretty detailed location history even if you have "location history" turned off). But I'm still not using a web browser from Google - the fact that they design their own settings to be as untransparent as the example above is quite sufficient reason in my book never to take anything they say at face value.
 
Upvote 0
I have every type of Google history tracking turned off in my Google settings anyway (including the backdoors, such as the way "app and web history" lets them keep a pretty detailed location history even if you have "location history" turned off). But I'm still not using a web browser from Google - the fact that they design their own settings to be as untransparent as the example above is quite sufficient reason in my book never to take anything they say at face value.
Likewise buddy.
 
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones